Continuing my series of blogs on the development of the opera Philippa, based on the life of Harlem-born concert pianist Philippa Duke Schuyler, the daughter of African-American journalist George S. Schuyler and white Texan Josephine Cogdell, who thought that if they combined their superior genes they could produce a genius. Philippa was, indeed, a prodigy […]

I have always perceived a great significance in the Strehlow story. For me, till recently, it was the story of T.G.H. (Ted) Strehlow born at remote Hermannsburg Mission in the central Australian desert in 1908, growing up among young Aranda boys and girls speaking their language as a mother tongue; then going back to Central […]

Another in my series of blogs on the development of the opera Philippa, based on the life of Philippa Duke Schuyler. Philippa, the Harlem-born daughter of African-American journalist George S. Schuyler and white Texan Josephine Cogdell, toured Vietnam as a concert pianist in 1967 and died rescuing some ‘orphans’, the children of US servicemen and […]